Quotes,Work Orders & Invoices

[Barry]

Hi all:
I hope that I am posting these questions in the appropriate forum. I have a
few questions with regards to quotes, workorders and invoices. In my
application there is the ability to create a quote with details comprised of
parts and labor, each in separate tables. The same for workorders and
invoices. My question is, when a quote is accepted by a customer, should the
quote be "changed" to an workorder and added to the workorders table? The
same questions would be applicable to workorders and invoices. What table
fields should be used to track the changes, (ie a yes/no changed to field?)
and what might be the best method to transfer/copy data from one table to
another? I hope that I have made this clear and I look forward to hearing
any responses.
Thanks,
Barry

 

[Piet Linden]

Hi all:
I hope that I am posting these questions in the appropriate forum.  I have a
few questions with regards to quotes, workorders and invoices.  In my
application there is the ability to create a quote with details comprisedof
parts and labor, each in separate tables.  The same for workorders and
invoices.  My question is, when a quote is accepted by a customer, should the
quote be "changed" to an workorder and added to the workorders table?  The
same questions would be applicable to workorders and invoices.  What table
fields should be used to track the changes, (ie a yes/no changed to field?)
and what might be the best method to transfer/copy data from one table to
another?  I hope that I have made this clear and I look forward to hearing
any responses.
Thanks,
Barry

there's no need to copy them anywhere. You would just leave them in
the original tables. If you want to lock them against modification,
you would do that at form level and disallow direct access to the
tables.

 

[Barry]

Thanks for the response. I do understand at some point after changing the
quote status that there should not be any changes allowed. Would there then
just be a status field? So that the "type" (quote, workorder or invoice) can
be known and presented with the appropriate labeling? Additionally, I keep
more data with a workorder than a quote, mostly dates and some workorders
were never quotes. Wouldn't the logic become rather confusing if the data
were only in a single table?
Thanks again,
Barry

 

[Rick A.B.]

Barry

If your storing all that information in a single table then you need
to rethink your design or just us a spreadsheet. Just off the top of
my head you need a customer table, order table, orderID table,
products table etc.

Rick

 

[Barry]

Rick:
Thanks for the reply. I have tables for everything. Please refer to my
original post. My question is, if a quote is created and then accepted by
the customer, what is the best way to change the quote to a workorder? Or,
what is the best way to populate the workorder tables (workorders, woparts
and wolabor)? Update queries? Code to open the tables and add the records? I
am just trying to figure out what the basic business rules for a situation
like this are normally.
Thanks,
Barry

 

[John W. Vinson]

Hi all:
I hope that I am posting these questions in the appropriate forum. I have a
few questions with regards to quotes, workorders and invoices. In my
application there is the ability to create a quote with details comprised of
parts and labor, each in separate tables. The same for workorders and
invoices. My question is, when a quote is accepted by a customer, should the
quote be "changed" to an workorder and added to the workorders table? The
same questions would be applicable to workorders and invoices. What table
fields should be used to track the changes, (ie a yes/no changed to field?)
and what might be the best method to transfer/copy data from one table to
another? I hope that I have made this clear and I look forward to hearing
any responses.
Thanks,
Barry

If the data you're collecting on quotes, workorders and invoices is very
similar (or if the latter two just involve some added fields), I'd be inclined
to use one table for all three. An Integer field (using an Option Group or
Combo Box on a form, perhaps) could use 1 for a Quote, 2 for a Workorder and 3
for an Invoice; you could just reclassify the record as an order moves through
the process.

This will depend greatly on your business rules and data structure of course!

 

[Mike Painter]

If the data you're collecting on quotes, workorders and invoices is
very similar (or if the latter two just involve some added fields),
I'd be inclined to use one table for all three. An Integer field
(using an Option Group or Combo Box on a form, perhaps) could use 1
for a Quote, 2 for a Workorder and 3 for an Invoice; you could just
reclassify the record as an order moves through the process.

This will depend greatly on your business rules and data structure of
course!

Agreed.
When you talk about "change" are you talking about change orders which may
affect work order and invoice but not the original quote.
If so you need to think about adding a layer on top perhaps named jobs.
Jobs have work quotes, work orders and invoices but a change order could be
added without affecting the original quote.

 

[Barry]

Agreed.
When you talk about "change" are you talking about change orders which may
affect work order and invoice but not the original quote.
If so you need to think about adding a layer on top perhaps named jobs.
Jobs have work quotes, work orders and invoices but a change order could be
added without affecting the original quote.


.Thanks for the input. There are no change orders. The question was regarding "changing" a quote to workorder. Perhaps the easiest solution is indeed to have single field to indicate the status or to reclassify the record.

Thank you again for the input.
Sincerely,
Barry